It is often desirable and sometimes important to be able to determine the stiffness of a fabric, inasmuch as stiffness affects the properties of a finished product made from the fabric or the performance of the manufacturing process by which the finished product is made. Previously known testers have not been suitable for accurately determining the stiffness of light weight fabrics. In one known stiffness tester that has been used for light weight fabrics a sample is slid off a plane, and the angle of the fall is measured. Static electricity causes variations in the angle of fall, which makes this type of tester very unreliable.